This is one of the most unreported stories about daily life in the developing world. Nearly half of the world’s population cooks over an open fire. Annually there are over 4 million deaths as a result of exposure to cook stove smoke. This makes it the fourth largest cause of death worldwide. Most of the victims are women and children.

In Sub-Saharan Africa - 609 million cook over an open fire. The smoke will kill 574,000 Africans this year. 520,000 will be children under five years old - that is equal to one child dying every single minute! Take a look at this 2 minute video and learn about the problem and see our simple solution:

We have been working in Africa for decades. We understand African constraints and respect cultural traditions and cooking methods and work with the women who do the cooking.

A myriad of cleaner cook stoves have been tried and tested. We discovered that the greater percentage of women did not like them for numerous reasons.

So in consultation with the women of Bolera village in Malawi we have replaced the traditional 3 Stone Fire with an efficient and robust 3 Pot Stove and in collaboration with them, have improved the design even further to improve safety and the ease of cooking, but we know this is only a temporary solution.

The only solution is achieving Global Goal 7 - Clean and affordable energy. Read more on what we are doing to achieve that.

These cheap, clean stoves were supposed to save millions of lives. What happened?